People often ask me what I use to create my training videos and enhance my screenshots and my answer is: Techsmith Camtasia for videos, and I use SnagItfor quick captures (still or video).

Camtasia is a powerful, yet easy video editor, an screen capture tool. You can capture your monitor, your voice, your webcam, your keyboard entries, and even your computer’s system sounds, and choose whether to use or edit all of those parts, as you wish. And, it’s easy to add video captured on another device, like a video camera, a still camera with video capabilities, even your smartphone! The markup tools can be used to enhance what your viewer sees – you can add highlights, callouts of text or graphics. You can animate items in the app, you can even use your computer’s voice to speech capabilities to create closed captioning! The learning curve is simple and Techsmith has some amazing online free videos (and I teach this, as well). Check it out HERE!

SnagIt is a Screen Capture and Screen Recorder application. It will capture screenshots and Videos, and allow you to mark them up or simple quickly produce a video to share online. It doesn’t have the power of al the video editing capabilities of Camtasia, but if you need a quick and powerful capture tool with great markup functions, this is a quick, accessible tool to choose.

Today, they announced a free plugin that works with almost all NLE’s (non-linear editors, for those of you who don’t do video). And, that plugin includes lots of free effects to be used in your work, along with a quick tutorial on how to use them (the transitions aren’t applied as you may be used to – they use track mattes and such – easy though). There’re also some effects using my favorite “toy” – blending modes.

I don’t recommend using all of these as they’re created – but they’re cool enough that you can. But, you can also make them your own, amending their contents to your preferences.

Professional, easy to record and edit, Screen Recording and video editing software. Record your screen, your webcam, your microphone (or just one at a time). Edit it with Camtasia’s powerful but VERY USER FRIENDLY editing tools, and output a professional video in short order.

Camtasia is the solution most often used by training professionals, product demonstrators, and major companies and government agencies around the world (I know, I taught a bunch of them).

High end editing, Speech to Text for CC, Transitions, Text actions – all in an interface that’s clear and easy to use.

Get it at 10% off until 12/31/18 – use promo code “SAVE10” at checkout (leave out the quotes)

If you’re a teacher, if you provide screen demonstrations, if you’re in the IT or Training department of a business, or provide training to others, this is the set of apps for you. From the longer form of training to quick edits, Techsmith Camtasia and SnagIt are my go-to tools. They’re available on Windows and Mac, and you can’t go wrong without them.

Currently, you can see the results of their usage on my YouTube channel (all of the quick videos I create for the Adobe forums are made using these apps) and most of my training videos have been made with these applications.

In the upcoming weeks, you may expect me to post some demonstration videos about how to use the applications, and what they can do – but you should also know that Techsmith’s website has a TON of great training materials, PLUS free downloads of backgrounds, transitions, etc – to make your editing simpler and quicker.

If you haven’t heard of Plotagraph before, it is SaaS-based solution that allows you to bring your photos to life. From a single JPEG, Plotoagraph Pro can create MP4, animated GIFs and more; with endless skies, flowing streams, crashing waves and of course far more abstract artwork than that. For a quick overview about the software, watch this quick video, or this longer video, and to see some incredible animated images created with it check out the gallery here.

Plotagraph Pro pairs well with the depth and contrast that you develop in Aurora HDR 2017, so you can create your own truly living photo.

You Get:Aurora HDR 2017, The world’s most powerful HDR image editor for the Mac.Plotagraph Pro+ Membership (3 months) – Bring your photos to life, animate from a single JPEG.

Remember to use Coupon Code SGANS_DISC to get the discounted price of $89. Without the coupon, the cost is $99.

In so many of my classes, particularly Photoshop, Digital Photography and the Video applications, we discuss image resolution – or DPI – dots per inch (or PPI – pixels per inch). For the most part, my students seem to grasp the concepts from when I teach in (as I describe it) “Stephanese“. But here’s another discussion on the subject – this time in “CreativeBloqese“.

As almost all of my students know, I’m a bit of a type geek. So, imagine how fulfilled my inner geek feels, when I find blog post about Typefaces, Type Structure, Type families, Type anatomy, and Type Classification, the use of Type in Paragraphs, Typographic Terms like kerning and spacing, Page Layout and Type, and so much more!

Although this article is written with a focus on software development, the article is about DESIGN. Knowing what you’re using, and why. As I always say “in design, you can always break the rules, but first you have to know what the rules are!”

I seriously recommend this article to all my design students, my motion graphics students, my still image students, and anyone else who feels that Type is more than just a way to make a word show up.